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From MediaGiraffe
Founding Convention:
The Center for Community
Media
A
partnership between Southern Vermont College and the Bennington community
Saturday, May 5, 2007 / 8:15 a.m.-5:30
p.m. / at the college
This page provides links and background notes from a one-day summit to discuss the potential creation of a Southwestern Vermont Community Media Center. The event was convened by Southern Vermont College, which owns WBTN, 1370kc, a commercial radio station serving Bennington.
WHO ATTENDED . . . .LINK TO AGENDA . . . LINK TO INVITATION . . .
VIEW PHOTOS . . . VIEW AUDIO-VIDEO
Resources
- We viewed EPIC, a production of two interns, Robin Thompson and Robin Sloan, at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., a scenario for the future of news.
- Wally Bowen, of Mountain Area Information Network, in Asheville, N.C., included in his talk his theoretical basis for the current media environment.
- Streaming of the WBTN signal -- one resource.
"Vision and reality" by Karen Gross
The scene for the day was set by Karen Gross, president of Southern Vermont College. She called the event a signal that the college wants to reach outside of itself, a meeting to reflect, brainstorm, engage and make things happen. "The college on the hill has to have porous walls," she said. She said the college's ownership of WBTN was one reason she came to SVC. She said the radio station must be "not just the voice of the college" but should give voice to local community members.
Sen. Bob Hartwell talk
State Sen. Bob Hartwell, D-Manchester, in his welcoming remarks talked about education as a connecting bridge to the community and media as the connector. He said of the day's event: "This is a very important exercise today, this is everything."
Wally Bowen talk
"Magic scepter" discussion
LINK TO VIDEO EXCERPT OF DISCUSSION
In our post-lunch discussions, we tried to imagine a situation where we were free of any financial or organization constraints -- what would we ideally like to see happen? We tried to focus on vision, goals, structure, curriculum, community role, platforms and financing. Although we touched on all these topics, the discuss ended up mostly discussing concrete "best-case" issues with Wally Bowen, Steve Pierce, Tim Nulty and Tony Elliot.
We talked about a vision of citizen involvement and re-engaging the public in the political process. Where is the activism, we asked? From the college's point of view, the goals are:
- Focus on the communications curriculum and give it a sense of purpose.
- "Unbeach the whale" -- Karen Gross' analogy for WBTN being stuck at a crossroads.
- Understand the resources and staff necessary to make a go of WTBTN. What would it look like operationally, structurally, economically?
Bob Howe observed that any changes need to be screened as being of benefit to students, or as a way to bring in students. Karen Gross though the help to the college could be in less formal, or less direct, ways.
Teach multicultural management, not radio?
Steve Pierce shifted the conversation by observing that the value of WBTN to the college is not in teaching how to run an automated radio station -- as there are few jobs for that in today's media world -- but rather teaching how to develop and manage a multicultural organization. Others said that engaging the community is the point, and that the radio station is only a mechanism to achieve that. So the goal is not to run a radio station, but to engage communities through the radio station.
Sheila Collins agreed that technical skills are not the main point.
OTHER POINTS CONSIDERED:
- Overarching visions: integrating old an new technologies (radio and the web); still folks who are not online, so how do you reach folks who don't have access to new technologies?
- Participatory democracy is in danger; more engaged citizenry would be a goal of a community media center.
- A goal is to re-engaging the public in their own destiny; young people are moving away from the political process and accepting the status quo.
Role of the college?
What is the role of the college in creating a replicable model? Is it essential that an ed institution take the lead role? Not necessarily, but in this case the college does have the radio station. CATV may not have the broader view to knit these things together.
One of college's goal is to gain a focus for the communications curriculum. What value does it have for SVC? The other goal is to think through the relationships among the components: radio station, CATV, print media, web platform. Conceptually, how do these pieces all fit together?
"Unbeaching the whale"
- President Gross would expand the goals: deeper richness and "unbeach the whale" (radio). It's time to get it off the beach and unleash its potential. How is it funded? How would it be managed? How would it fit?
- Anything you do must reflect back to the students. If it doesn't contribute to the benefit of the students, it shouldn't be done. Exposing students to broader range of people, content, experiences is central to SVC's mission.
- Does the radio station need a paradigm shift? from commercial operation to being more open to the community? And if so, how does the college handle political fallout for changing the radio station?
Task group reports
The group self-assigned members into three task groups to consider constructing a mission statement for the Center, an operational setup and educational outcomes. This produced a set of statements found HERE.
Discussion, recommendation, next steps
After lunch the group talked more and then dispersed for a second set of shorter (half-hour) task-group discussions on:
- structure
- community engagement
- financing
Upon return, the resulted in a set of findings and next steps found HERE.
